Variations on Many Themes

1601[privately printed pamphlet, West Point Academy Press, 1882]

Clemens wrote this Conversation between Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, and others, in the summer of 1876 as a private letter to a friend. It is one of the few surviving examples of Clemens's more bawdy writings.

By 1880 a small circle of friends and acquaintances was enjoying an unauthorized printing of the text. Finally, in 1882, Clemens authorized a limited edition of 50 copies, printed by his friend Charles Erskine Scott Wood in an appropriately archaic font at the West Point Academy Press.